a weird sound was heard of invisible hands busy laying foundations, erecting walls and sculpturing statuary. By half past three o’clock the six wells were dug, the six buildings completed and nine hundred and ninety-nine statues standing in their places. But Mboq Loro Jonggrang, roused from her slumbers by the hammering and chiselling, and suspecting what was going on, ordered her handmaidens out to stamp the _padi_[41] and to strew the ground, where the noise was loudest, with flowers and to sprinkle perfume. The spirits of the lower regions cannot bear the odour of flowers and perfumes, as everybody knows; so they had to desist and deserted their almost finished work in precipitate flight, to the consternation of Bondowoso, who pronounced this curse: Since the girls of Prambanan take pleasure in fooling a faithful suitor, may the gods grant that they shall have to wait long before they become brides![42] Having said this, yet hoping against hope, he called on his lady, who asked tauntingly whether the honour of his visit meant the announcement that the task imposed upon him by way of testing his love, had been completed. This filled the measure and he answered: No, it is not and you shall complete it yourself. The threat was immediately realised: Loro Jonggrang changed into a statue of stone, the thousandth, which terminated the labour of the spirits and is still to be seen in a niche on the north side of the principal edifice. The reader will recognise in this legend the hoary eastern material of many others current also in western lands. It pervades the legendary lore connected with the plain of Prambanan in widest sense, and one of its many variations, to be recorded farther on, applies specially to the Buddhist _chandi_ Sewu or “thousand temples”, only a little distance from the Loro Jonggrang group;[43] in fact, originally adapted to account for the many ruins scattered over a vast area in that region, it has taken separate forms to meet the requirements of separate localities. Apart from tradition, we owe the oldest extant description of the Prambanan antiquities to the East India Company’s servant Lons at Samarang, who wrote in 1733. The Governor-General van Imhoff referred to them in 1746 and Raffles, his successor during the British Interregnum, not satisfied with writing and talking alone, commissioned Cornelius with Wardenaar to survey them and make plans for reconstruction. After 1816 things returned to the accustomed neglect: A short stay in the plain of Prambanan, says an authority already quoted,[44] is sufficient to note that thousands of valuable hewn and sculptured stones have been and still are used for all sorts of purposes ...; from time immemorial, great quantities of stone have been (and still are) taken from Prambanan by his Highness the Sooltan of Jogjakarta, generally once or twice a year ...; this happens, if I am well informed, in compliance with a written demand, fiated by the local authorities. The foundation,